END OF SEASON, ENDGAME FOR TURNER, SMITH

All kinds of hail fell on Qualcomm Stadium Sunday prior to the Chargers-Raiders season finale, a fitting precursor to all kinds of hell breaking loose today.

Because a volatile era (that really shouldn’t have been that volatile) has ended. New Year’s Eve. Out with the same old stuff, in with the unknown.

Chargers President Dean Spanos will fire Norv Turner, his head coach for six seasons, and A.J. Smith, his general manager for 10, much to the delight of many Chargers fans, who never liked Turner to begin with and grew to loathe Smith when the lug nuts began to fall off a Ferrari that morphed into a jalopy.

The Chargers, winners of three of their final four games, concluded their first losing season (7-9) since 2003 with a 24-21 victory over Oakland. But it wasn’t nearly enough to save football jobs. The team missed the playoffs for the third consecutive year, unacceptable by everyone’s standards, especially those of Spanos, who came this close to firing Turner and Smith a year ago.

When it was over, Turner, in one of his few shining oratory moments behind a podium, praised the way his players always stood up for him, saying: “It is the ultimate. The one thing that I always will appreciate best is that because of the mindset about a half-hour after I was hired, they always had the out because it was easy to blame me. The players always had an easy out. I don’t think, with maybe one or two exceptions, they ever took it. They never used it.

“On Mondays, it would have been easy for them to go along with the crowd and say, ‘I confess; he did it.’ They didn’t. They always took coaching and acknowledged where they needed to get better.”

This time, Spanos had to make a business decision. There have been TV blackouts. Apathy and anger has been growing in his fan base. There is a chance of losing this town as he attempts to get a new stadium built. In the past, Spanos hasn’t always heeded the fans’ wishes, but this time he had no choice.

Unless Turner and Smith were able to drive this team well into the playoffs, changes were going to be made. There never was much question of it. The two men who helped produce the most productive era in Chargers history will be gone, and it is expected to happen today, which is right. No use to delay the inevitable.

Now, of course, the question is: What happens next? These are not going to be the only two vacated jobs among the 32 NFL clubs. Office space will be available.

It is expected that Jimmy Raye, Smith’s director of player personnel, will take over as general manager. For sure, Raye will not be as stubborn as Smith, who shut out people he didn’t like. But how far will Raye stray from his mentor’s football philosophy?

A.J. wanted nothing to do with malcontent players and ran them out of his locker room as fast as he could. He was brilliant early on in his tenure and then made some mistakes on draft day and allowed players to leave that incensed the fans. He stood by Turner, his only coaching hire, all along, and that didn’t help endear him to the public, either.

It would be wrong to believe that Spanos hasn’t quietly been doing research on the available coaches. If Raye is named, the interview process will proceed immediately, although under NFL rules, assistant coaches for playoff teams can’t interview for jobs right away.

Continuity in football ops will not be a bad thing because Smith’s people were out all fall scouting both college football talent and potential veteran free agents. The Chargers themselves have 25 free agents — 19 unrestricted — on their roster. They will want some back, not all.

This team will not have the same look and feel it has had under Turner. For one thing, he called his own offensive plays. And how many of his assistant coaches remain employed here will depend on the new coach. The coaching hire is not expected to come from within.

A big question is whether the vocal section of the fan base will be pleased with any hire. As Turner noted, he was instantly rejected, for whatever reason, when he took over for Marty Schottenheimer, who was rum to Smith’s Castor oil. But Turner never was an embarrassment and had some superior moments here, as did Smith, who at one time had built what widely was regarded as the most talented team in football.

It’s up to the new guys now. The key to the whole matter is that few teams with losing records have a quarterback as talented as Philip Rivers, who this year was plagued by awful offensive line play brought about by an inordinate amount of injuries. Strides have been made on defense, but the offense needs a makeover.

Rivers, who did his part to save Turner’s job last year, didn’t really have much of a say this time around. He, like everyone else, knew it was coming.

“When you play quarterback for a guy for 102 games, that’s a lot of time spent,” Rivers said. “A lot of fun, a lot of hard work, plenty of disagreements and aggravations, and all those things that you love about this game and you love about a coach/player relationship.

“It’s hard. Other than my dad, I don’t know that there’s ever been a coach you’ve ever had so much respect and trust for.

“It’s been a heckuva run.”

The Norv and A.J. roller-coaster run ends today, the two of them getting off with no tickets left.